


A Century, A Scythe, And A Long-Held Resentment

by TheSightlessSniper



Series: Long Overdue [1]
Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Angst, Ciel is not a brat, Could be considered Out Of Character, Demon Ciel Phantomhive, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post Kuroshitsuji II, Uncaring Sebastian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 20:38:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5884396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSightlessSniper/pseuds/TheSightlessSniper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘I asked you to forever be my butler.’ He seems to stumble over his words, and the smell of salt reaches my nose…his eyes are sore from tears. What does he have to cry about? ‘But I don’t think that it was ever a fair request. I rescind my order.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Century, A Scythe, And A Long-Held Resentment

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure what made me write this. I'm currently running on autopilot because I haven't slept properly.

The resentment is still there after over a century.

It wasn’t even his fault, and I’ve always known that. But did he have to request that I stay with him? For the rest of eternity, I will be tied to him in servitude, past the world’s end and into the abyss of the sun’s consumption of the world. I’ve found myself aching for a loophole; a way out.

‘Sebastian.’ The name of his dead dog, indeed. I am a faithful pet, playing fetch for him, bowing to his every whim. ‘Come here for a moment.’ I wonder what he wishes for me to do now?

His eyes look raw, reddened by something other than those infernal irises. They’re bloodshot…has he been rubbing at them? ‘My lord?’

‘I asked you to forever be my butler.’ He seems to stumble over his words, and the smell of salt reaches my nose…his eyes are sore from tears. What does he have to cry about? ‘But I don’t think that it was ever a fair request. I rescind my order.’ He turns away from me. I hear him swallow and choke, smell the blood as he sinks a small fang into his lip. His tears are not done.

‘My lord, what is it you are asking of me?’ I place one hand on his shoulder. I’ve long since discarded the gloves. With nobody to hide the contract from, such accessories seem frivolous and unnecessary.

‘For once…nothing. I’m trying to-‘ he breathes deep, and I hear it catch in his throat, ‘-I’m trying to say you are free to go.’

My own chest tightens strangely, and my free hand clasps over my ribs. A dull ache over my heart…What does it mean? ‘My lord-‘

‘I’ve been a demon for far longer than I should have been. I shouldn’t have been one at all,’ I hear the resolve in his voice. As ten-year-old boy, I saw him as he put aside childish things, knowing he could only conceal so much of his age behind demands and harsh insults. He appears to have put aside even more of those things now. Is that the human trait of compassion I hear? ‘I shouldn’t have asked you to slave for me until the end of time.’

The ache above my heart stays. I don’t know what this means. I almost…feel fear. ‘My-‘

‘Ciel. I am no longer your master. You don’t have to call me “My Lord” anymore.’ He turns back to me, his hand reaching for the one on his shoulder and grasping it within his own. The contract symbol flickers alive at the touch, and only as his thumb strokes over it do I notice the cracks in its surface. He’s breaking the contract. ‘If I ever somehow…if there is ever a way you can take my soul, return to me. It should have been yours long ago.’

His eyes are full of unshed tears, not unlike those I had seen in Elizabeth’s eyes many times over every time her affections for Ciel had been rebuffed. He’s trying to avoid my face, as if he can’t bear to look at me anymore. ‘…Ciel.’ His eyes still can’t link with mine. They’re dancing from one side my body to the other as if searching for a way out of what he is asking. ‘Ciel. Look at me.’

I watch him finally flick those eyes up, and dampness appears on my own cheeks. My fingers drag through the fluid there, and as I trace the lines up, I realise their source; they’ve come from me. His eyes flicker from infernal to human, and something stirs in me as I relish the moments they stay that bright blue. He shakes his head. ‘I want you to be free.’

The symbol in his eye shatters, the one on my hand following it. The inky lines split, then bleed away like they’re being washed away by rain. He closes those eyes on me and collapses onto his knees, and it is only as I reach for his chin and look into his dulling irises that I realise he is broken. And as that ache encompasses my chest, it hits me that so am I.

He falls somewhat limp as I let go of his face, hands resting on his lap and head bowed before me. I see the splash of his tears on the surface below our feet, smell the salt in them; every single one imbued with sorrow, regret, and pain. Then more fall, and they begin to turn red, leaking the contract away from him. He briefly looks up to me, and the line of red trickles down his his cheek. He shoots me one small sad smile; the only hint of a real smile I’ve ever seen on his face. ‘You’re free. Go find a soul to feast on…one that eclipses mine.’

My hand aches with the missing symbol. I never reaped the rewards, and something doesn’t sit quite right as another belt of pain rips through my lungs, and suddenly I’m the one on my knees. I’m choking. Everything is closing in, and I can’t breathe and-

His hand reaches for mine, that sad little smile still faintly tracing his lips, and he leans forwards into me. The lips touch at mine, scalding me, and I can taste him…I can taste his soul behind those lips, teasing at me.

He lets me go, and turns to someone I didn’t realise was there. ‘You don’t have to worry about me anymore.’ And then there’s blood everywhere. His still small body jerks forward, and it takes me moments to realise that the scythe belonging to Undertaker is what has shed it.

I’m shaking. He collapses back as the scythe retreats, lying in a pool of his own life-force, and I’m over him, my hands trying to put pressure on his wounds. I don’t want this. I don’t want him to die. I’ve needed him more than I ever realised and now it could be too late.

He coughs and spits blood up, but his movements never still completely. A wound like this should have finished such a young demon, but he is resilient to an almost ridiculous degree. I sit there for minutes…hours…days, above him, hands on his chest stemming the wound and slowly watching them heal over inch by agonising inch. He speaks nothing the entire time, just watches me as I hover above him, eyes silently begging the question: ‘Why are you saving me?’ His eyes bore into mine, fingers slowly regaining the ability to move, and they touch at my left hand where our contract used to lie. For the first time, he looks peaceful. The hands dance up my arms as the last marks on his skin seal over, and wipe away at the tears I had thought had long dried. ‘I wanted you to not hate me anymore.’

Undertaker is gone, leaving us alone in our own little piece of Hell in the middle of a once-in-ruins cottage by the sea on a spit of land with little over sixty-five thousand inhabitants. We are merely a myth here; a tale of a haunting that nobody can ever quite get the details of, in a place that feeds off of such stories like candy. Ciel’s blood that had pooled around us has gone, seeping back into his body as he recovered. He lets his hands fall away. ‘What are you still doing here, Sebastian?’

‘Do you want me to leave?’ My tone comes out as desperate. Have I really become so needy? ‘You dissolved the contract.’

‘I don’t want you being a caged bird. Because if you love something, you should let it go.’ The words sting in a way I never anticipated possible. Love?

I know not of love. I didn’t think it was something I could feel. Demons feel sinful things, only seven of them repeated like a mantra in cultures across the human world. We feel, but love?

His face speaks volumes as I let go of him. He leans to one side, body resting against the small table where he still occasionally eats a human meal for old-times sake. His hands slide up and down his own arms. Enough humanity in him that he still feels the cold.

I move automatically, reaching for the soft blanket he loves to curl himself up within in a cocoon as he reads. He discards most books as mindless drivel, but when he finds one of value, it is placed on that treasured shelf by the window with the folded blanket. He curls in on himself a little more before standing. He’s unsure on his feet, but reaches his armchair without issue, sinking down into the soft cushions to the point where he appears almost swamped by them and the blanket. ‘I love you, Sebastian. And that’s why I’m letting you go. You’re free.’

I can’t take this aching any longer. It sears through my chest, scraping over the lump of muscle that is my heart, and I clutch at the skin above through my shirt, trying to make it stop. Being free like this…it shouldn’t hurt like this. Is this what he feels when he speaks those words? ‘Ciel…’ My voice comes out strained, and I wander over to where he is sat.

While I haven’t been watching all these years…he’s changed. He’s matured, physically and mentally. Even in his demon form, his body has grown to that of a young man, stopping as he reached twenty-one to stay perpetually at the peak of his youth. It’s been more than a hundred years since that night, and it’s only now I’m seeing that the humanity he lacked when alive only seeped out when he had already died and been resurrected. He was no longer the spoilt but traumatised boy I had served for so long. His commands had slowly become softer, more polite, attempts at friendliness and kindness, and I was too wrapped up in my own wrath to realise how much he ached in guilt that he could not fulfil his end of the bargain.

I sink to my knees before him and gather one delicate hand between my own, laying a kiss across the knuckles as if he were a maiden, and I come to the stunning conclusion that my resentment has been misdirected because the petulant child I was once responsible for is no longer. Ciel Phantomhive is a demon, but he is also a man with human emotions because of the consequences of his birth as a demon. And for too long, I have ignored them.

I have no kinds of instincts as I lean back up, but as I touch my lips to his, the pain in my chest melts away and the air feels clearer. When I pull away, his confusion is written all over his features, and I lay more kisses upon him, unsure of what compels me so. But compelled I am, and slowly I drag him into what I now understand is a taste of what my body craves.

The remnants of his soul still remain within this form, and the taste fills me. It’s peppered with even more pain and torment, anguish that might not have been if I had not been so uncaring this past century. Every sip is delicious. I savour the flavours as we break apart, my tongue singing as the complexity is decoded. He asks me to find another soul, when the mere dregs of this one tastes so perfect?

He looks at me with such confusion as I slip my hands into his and pull him up into my arms, but he accepts the embrace I offer as I pull him close. My own actions shock me, most likely as much as they shock him, and I wonder why I have been wallowing in my own resentment of Hannah, Claude, and Alois for so long. Mere tastes they may be, but they have quenched my thirst, dampened my pain, and something about Ciel makes me wonder whether my actions tonight were indeed ones of love. Is this pain his lips so easily relieve love?

I question them long into the night, and what future will befall us. But then he kisses me again, and I question no more.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed, because this one kicked me in the ovaries when I was already down.


End file.
